In a post put up a short while ago, I mentioned a paper titled The Way Forward, and mentioned that it both diagnosed the present national economic impasse and offered a three-pillared plan for how to get past it. Pillar 1, I noted, involves well targeted public infrastructure investment.

Readers who find that prospect intriguing might like this paper that my Cornell colleague and regular Sunday NYT columnist Robert Frank have co-authored. One very important upshot of the paper is that the multiplier for infrastructure spending is sufficiently large as to render such expenditures largely self-liquidating. But there are many additional reasons to undertake these projects now, as the paper elaborates.

I'm pleased also to be able to report, in this connection, that Congressman Brian Higgins of Buffalo, New York has introduced legislation in Congress prompted by this paper - the Nation-Building Here at Home Act of 2012. A white paper in support of this legislation is adapted from the foregoing.